One Place News
The NFL has become something of a traveling road show, with games played all over the Earth, the draft held throughout the country, and the Super Bowl touring one elite American city after another. And Charlotte may be close to becoming one of the destinations.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Thursday evening during a fireside chat hosted by Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper that he believes Charlotte would lend itself to hosting an NFL draft, and he did not dismiss the idea of the city getting a Super Bowl at some point in the future.
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“…You see the way the downtown’s evolving…” Goodell told an audience of Panthers and local dignitaries gathered to celebrate the renewed naming right for Bank of America Stadium and the facility’s renovation. “The first [thing] came into my mind: I said to David, ‘This is built for a draft.’
“It’s the location of Charlotte in general. And I think the way the draft is now, it’s close to a million people attended. And they’re coming from all over, including internationally. And it’s become a global event that I think would be a terrific thing here in this town, with everything that’s being built.”
The NFL draft is is spoken for over the next two years. Washington D.C. will hold the event in 2027 and Minneapolis has the event for 2028. So if Charlotte is going to compete for the event, the 2029 draft would be the first realistic target.
The draft has been steadily growing as a fan event since the NFL cast aside the indoor versions, which used to be held in a New York City hotel or Radio City Music Hall. The 2017 draft in Philadelphia was the first held outdoors and it had 205,000 in attendance.
That number is dwarfed by this year’s event in Pittsburgh that set a new record with 805,000 people in attendance.
But for all its emerging significance, the draft does not compare on scale to the Super Bowl as the NFL’s signature road event.
Tepper would love one in Charlotte even if that’s not likely to happen soon.
“There’d just be another step in that,” Goodell said. “As far as the Super Bowl is concerned, there is no question in that the city keeps growing the way it is. It’s really the stadium and the facility here is wonderful, and it’s certainly Super Bowl quality.
“The real issue with Super Bowls now is number of hotel rooms, all the hotels, and other facilities, which, every time I come back here, it’s completely different than it was when I was here the last time.
“And so, I think that as growth continues, I think, you know, that’s probably somewhere down the line in the future.”
The next available Super Bowl is in 2031.
A leaked NFL Super Bowl bid specification sheet from the early 2010s required a Super Bowl host city to have hotel rooms equal to at least 35% of the stadium’s seating capacity within a 60-minute drive – which equals about 25,000 or so rooms for a typical NFL stadium.
But as the game has grown, the required number of rooms has also grown to an estimated 60,000 to 75,000.
The greater Charlotte area boasts approximately 50,000 hotel rooms but many of those are in outlying areas.
Tepper remains hopeful.
“It would be great to get into the Super Bowl here. It might be great if we had a Super Bowl here,” he said. “We have, I heard we have, we’re the center of the east coast, with one of the best transportations, sixth busiest airport in the country.
“And I was mentioning in the way back there, that I had noticed like in Augusta, we have more million-dollar house probably closer to the stadium than any other stadium in the country. And I notice in Augusta, they give those homes up to the extent that we may not have all the luxury hotels.
“In fact, I got Dan Morgan’s house for you already.”
Dan Morgan is the President of Football Operations and General Manager for the Panthers. And, yes, Tepper was kidding.”
